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WORK TITLE: The World in a Grain
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 7/13/1965
WEBSITE: https://vincebeiser.com/
CITY: Los Angeles
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
Also Canadian.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born July 13, 1965.
EDUCATION:University of California at Berkeley, B.A. (summa cum laude).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, editor, and journalist. SoCal Connected (a television news program), producer and correspondent; Mother Jones, senior editor; Playboy, contributor editor; Oakland Tribune, senior editor; Jerusalem Report, senior writer. Guest on television and radio programs.
AWARDS:Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, grantee; National Magazine Award for General Excellence (two-time recipient, as part of a reporting team); Emmy Award, Los Angeles-area; recipient of awards and recognition from organizations such as the American Society of Journalists and Authors; the Columbia, Medill and Missouri Graduate Schools of Journalism; the National Mental Health Association, and the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.
WRITINGS
Contributor to magazines and newspapers, including Wired, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Guardian (London), GQ (UK), Nation, Mother Jones, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times. Author’s works have been translated into six languages. Also author of a film screenplay.
Author’s nonfiction works have been optioned for film and television.
SIDELIGHTS
Vince Beiser is a prolific and award-winning journalist, editor, and writer. Based in Los Angeles, California, Beiser “has reported from over one hundred countries, states, provinces, kingdoms, occupied territories, liberated areas, no man’s lands and disaster zones,” commented a writer on the Vince Beiser website. He has twice been a member of a reporting team that won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence and was a cowinner of a Los Angeles-area Emmy Award. His work has appeared in major newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Guardian (London), Wired, Atlantic, Nation, Playboy, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, and the Wall Street Journal. He has served as a senior editor at Mother Jones, a contributing editor at Playboy, and a senior writer for the Jerusalem Report, the leading newsmagazine in Israel.
It is also notable that Beiser’s articles have been included in numerous textbooks and anthologies. His work has been translated into six languages and has been optioned for film and television projects. Beiser holds a B.A. (summa cum laude) in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of California Berkeley.
The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Shaped Civilization, Beiser’s first book, closely examines the role that the common and humble grain of sand has played throughout the history of the world. Sand may be extremely common, but Beiser considers it “the most important solid substance on Earth” and the most critical component of the foundations of modern civilization. Apart from air and water, sand is the most frequently used material on Earth. It is a vital component of the concrete that is used to make buildings and roads. Beiser asserts that the importance of sand cannot be overstated, and in his book, he makes a convincing case to support his claim.
Beiser carefully chronicles the history of sand and its many uses, largely in construction, but also in the manufacture of glass used in everything from common windows to high-precision optics. He notes also that sand is used to make computer screens and silicon chips that allow the world’s computers, smartphones, and televisions to function.
Sand may be among the world’s most important natural resources, but like many other such material, it is running out. Beiser notes how the worldwide demand for sand is driving an ongoing depletion of the material. In response, there are black markets in sand, sand mafia’s that control supplies of sand with brutal efficiency, and natural ecosystems that have been exploited and severely damaged in the quest for sand. Only certain types of sand are useful, he notes; desert sand, which is plentiful, is usually not suitable for most purposes involving sand.
Although Beiser sounds the alarm that worldwide supplies of sand are dwindling, he is optimistic that conservation measures can be successful while still allowing a robust commercial interest in sand.
“Breezily written and with insights on every page, this is an eye-opening look at a resource too often taken for granted,” commented a Publishers Weekly writer. Carl Hays, writing in Booklist, called the World in a Grain a “fascinating if sometimes unsettling volume.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor found the volume to be a “successful if disturbing argument that there is more to sand than meets the eye.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, August 1, 2018, Carl Hays, review of The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization, p. 12.
Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2018, review of The World in a Grain.
Publishers Weekly, May 21, 2018, review of The World in a Grain, p. 63.
Rock Products, July, 2018. Mark S. Kuhar, “The Sand Nan Cometh,” review of The World in a Grain, p. 4.
ONLINE
Vince Beiser website, http://www.vincebeiser.com (October 16, 2018).
BIO
Vince Beiser is an award-winning journalist based in Los Angeles. On August 7, 2018, Penguin-Random House will release The World in a Grain, his book about the deadly global war for the world’s most important yet most overlooked commodity: sand. Wired magazine editor-in-chief Nick Thompson calls it “a riveting, wonderfully written investigation.” Senator John McCain recently called Vince’s coverage of the issue “a must-read.”
Vince has reported from over 100 countries, states, provinces, kingdoms, occupied territories, liberated areas, no man’s lands and disaster zones. He has exposed conditions in California’s harshest prisons, trained with troops bound for Iraq, ridden with the first responders to disasters in Haiti and Nepal and hunted down other stories from around the world for publications including Wired, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Guardian, GQ (UK), The Nation, Mother Jones, Playboy, Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times.
He has also been a correspondent for the Emmy-winning news show SoCal Connected, a senior editor for Mother Jones, a contributing editor to Playboy, a special projects reporter for The Oakland Tribune, and a senior writer for The Jerusalem Report, Israel’s leading news magazine. He is a current grantee of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Vince’s work has been honored by Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Columbia, Medill and Missouri Graduate Schools of Journalism, the National Mental Health Association, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies and many other institutions. He has twice been part of a team that won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, and shared in a Los Angeles-area Emmy award. He is also a grantee of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
His articles have been featured in several textbooks and anthologies, and have been translated into half-a-dozen languages and reprinted around the world in publications from GQ-South Africa to Reader’s Digest-Asia. Three of them have also been optioned by film and television producers. Amazon Studios, in partnership with Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions and Epic Magazine, is developing a feature film based on one of his articles. Sony Pictures-backed Fable Pictures is developing a TV series based on another. Vince has also been a producer and correspondent for the Emmy-winning news show SoCal Connected.
Vince has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows on CBS, BBC, NPR and other networks, and on many panel discussions and lectures. He graduated with highest honors (Summa cum Laude) from the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies.
Vince is also, oddly, the co-author of a feature film screenplay commissioned by director Steven Soderbergh.
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Print Marked Items
Beiser, Vince: THE WORLD IN A
GRAIN
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Beiser, Vince THE WORLD IN A GRAIN Riverhead (Adult Nonfiction) $28.00 8, 7 ISBN: 978-0-399-
57642-3
A fresh history of "the most important solid substance on Earth, the literal foundation of modern
civilization."
Books on a single, familiar topic (salt, cod, etc.) have an eager audience, and readers will find this an
entirely satisfying addition to the genre. In his first book, journalist Beiser, whose work has appeared in
Wired, Mother Jones, and elsewhere, has done his homework, and he delivers often surprising information
about sand's role from low tech to high (construction, glass, electronics) without neglecting the painful
consequences of its skyrocketing production over the past century, which has made it a source of serious
environmental damage. Next to air and water, humans use more sand (largely silica, silicon dioxide) than
any material, mostly to make concrete for buildings and roads. Desert sand isn't suitable, writes the author,
so "riverbeds and beaches around the world are being stripped bare of their precious grains. Farmlands and
forests are being torn up. And people are being imprisoned, tortured, and murdered. All over sand." Of
course, it takes sand to make glass, which was not cheap until after 1900, when machines put an army of
glassmakers out of work, and bottles and picture windows became routine consumer products. Far less--but
far more purified--sand becomes silicon chips and similar high-tech essentials. Beiser devotes the second
half of the book to the process of moving sand from place to place. The iconic beaches we take for granted
are often artificial creations, eroding steadily, supporting a massive, multibillion-dollar, governmentsubsidized
industry to truck in sand. An area the size of Connecticut has been reclaimed from the sea for
airports, homes, or luxury resorts by vacuuming sand from the sea bottom or importing it, often illegally,
from the beaches and land of poor countries.
A successful if disturbing argument that there is more to sand than meets the eye.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Beiser, Vince: THE WORLD IN A GRAIN." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A540723347/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4c5152ac.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A540723347
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The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand
and How It Transformed Civilization
Carl Hays
Booklist.
114.22 (Aug. 1, 2018): p12.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization.
By Vince Beiser.
Aug. 2018. 304p. Riverhead, $28 (9780399576423). 620.1.
When we're lounging on a sunny beach in Hawaii or Florida, sipping a margarita and texting a friend back
home, few of us realize that the sand beneath our feet is as important for our mobile devices and the hotels
standing behind us as it is for our tropical vacation. In fact, sand is the third most consumable substance on
this earth, behind air and water. Without it, as veteran science writer Beiser reports in this fascinating if
sometimes unsettling volume, our civilization would not even exist in its current form. Sand, comprised
mostly of naturally ground quartz, when mixed with cement sup plies a full 70-percent of the ingredients in
concrete, which forms most of our buildings and roads. Along with describing sand's critical role in the
manufacturing of glass and silicon chips, Beiser also tracks the complicated process of sand mining and
exposes its little seen dark side, including widespread landscape destruction, species endangerment, and
even a "sand mafia" in India. A vital addition to every library collection's coverage of resource exploitation
and environmental issues.--Carl Hays
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Hays, Carl. "The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization." Booklist, 1
Aug. 2018, p. 12. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A550613048/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a109defd. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A550613048
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The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand
and How It Transformed Civilization
Publishers Weekly.
265.21 (May 21, 2018): p63.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization
Vince Beiser. Riverhead, $28 (304p) ISBN 9780-399-57642-3
What does sand--the humble stuff of beaches and dunes--have to do with the making of the contemporary
world? Quite a lot, actually, says journalist Beiser. He argues that sand, with its extraordinary range of
properties, including durability and pliancy, is "the most important solid substance on earth ... that makes
modern life possible." Sand is the key ingredient in concrete buildings and highways; in the form of glass, it
is "the thing that lets us see everything" through windows, microscope lenses, eyeglasses, and smartphone
screens. But due to the explosion in its uses and the increasing number and size of cities, sand is running
out: the book is at its urgent best in chapters on the black market in sand and the sand mafias that brutally
exercise control over resources in places like Raipur Khadar, a farming village south of New Delhi, whose
ecosystem has been plundered by the demand for sand. The flip side of the story of modern life is, of
course, the story of ecological devastation: Beiser moves from the. denuded beaches of St. Vincent, in the
Caribbean, to the replanted deserts of Inner Mongolia, showing the true cost of the "sand wars." Breezily
written and with insights on every page, this is an eye-opening look at a resource too often taken for
granted. Agent: Lisa Bankoff, ICM. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization." Publishers Weekly, 21
May 2018, p. 63. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A541012649/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=127e0569. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A541012649
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The Sand Nan Cometh
Mark S. Kuhar
Rock Products.
121.7 (July 2018): p4.
COPYRIGHT 2018 Mining Media, Inc
http://www.mining-media.com
Full Text:
You have all heard the international media reports about how the world is running out of sand. I have
previously written about it in this space.
Well brace yourself for a huge new media onslaught. A much-anticipated book, "The World in a Grain: The
Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization," is about to hit the shelves.
It was written by international journalist Vince Beiser, whose work has appeared in Wired, The Atlantic,
Harper's, The Guardian, GQ [UK), The Village Voice, The Nation, Mother Jones, Playboy, Rolling Stone,
The Wall Street Journal Magazine, The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.
Beiser has reported from more than 100 countries, states, provinces, emirates, kingdoms, occupied
territories, liberated areas, aircraft carriers, no man's lands and disaster zones. He has exposed conditions in
California's harshest prisons, trained with troops bound for Iraq, and ridden with the first responders to
disasters in Haiti and Nepal
The book is being touted as the "gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world--
sand--and the crucial role it plays in our lives."
From the book: "After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other--
even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon
chip, is made from sand. From Egypt's pyramids to the Hubble telescope, from the world's tallest skyscraper
to the sidewalk below it, from Charges' stained-glass windows to your iPhone, sand shelters us, empowers
us, engages us, and inspires us. It's the ingredient that makes possible our cities, our science, our lives--and
our future. And, incredibly, we're running out of it."
The good news is the book makes a case for the critical importance of sand. And that's good for business. It
also makes the case that the world better "conserve and protect" its sand resources. That isn't good for
business.
If you have a manufactured-sand operation, you are sitting in a good place, if you do not, you may want to
look at getting one.
"The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization," is going to provoke a
national and international conversation on sand. And we need to be right in the middle of it.
Mark S. Kuhar, editor
mkuhar@rockproducts.com
(330) 722-4081
Twitter: @editormarkkuhar
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Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Kuhar, Mark S. "The Sand Nan Cometh." Rock Products, July 2018, p. 4. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A549156337/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6fbd8b96.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A549156337